


I've Missed This

by hellostarlight20



Series: If only... [5]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Doctor in love, F/M, Fluff, Running, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-08
Updated: 2018-07-08
Packaged: 2019-06-07 06:21:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15213068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellostarlight20/pseuds/hellostarlight20
Summary: They’re running through the sewers, away from the guards chasing them, with a dangerous artifact in their possession, and grinning like loons.





	I've Missed This

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LadyPaigeC](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyPaigeC/gifts).



I’ve missed this

Contrary to his oft-voice criticism, the Doctor didn’t mind Jack Harkness, or whatever his true name. Then again, the Doctor knew all about hiding one’s true name. The Doctor also knew all about redemption.

No matter what Jack said—or didn’t say—about his past and about the reasons for turning conman, the man sought redemption.

Who was he to deny anyone that?

Rose, racing through the barely-lighted tunnels beside him, caught his gaze. She grinned widely and reached for his hand. The Doctor adjusted his pace to match hers and eagerly, gratefully grasp her hand.

He might understand Jack on a fundamental level Rose didn’t, hopefully never would, but that didn’t mean the Doctor wanted the Human anywhere near his Rose. Nope. Their fast friendship aside, Rose was—well, maybe not his-his, as in his lover, his wife, significant other, girlfriend if one wanted to use a word wholly inappropriate.

But Rose was his. More, he was irrevocably hers.

“Oh, I’ve missed this!” Jack shouted.

Rose giggled, breathless. They’d need to slow down soon if he didn’t want to lose her. As well as she kept up with him, and their constant running, even this prolonged trek taxed her Human stamina. 

“Missed what?” she asked, laughter outweighing the breathlessness. “Running through tunnels? Running through sewer tunnels? Wearing a dress?”

Jack barked out a laugh and the Doctor thought that might’ve been the most unburdened he’d ever heard the man. Granted it’d been not quite a month—Rose time—since meeting Jack. “All of the above!”

“Halt!” The words echoed from behind them.

The Doctor automatically yanked Rose against him and instinctively slammed them to the ground. No more than a heartbeat later, he heard Jack do the same, landing in unidentifiable muck with a loud squish. Barely a double beat of his hearts later, the ricochet of a projectile weapon whizzed by their heads.

From the sound of it, the angle would’ve gone straight through Rose’s heart.

Hot fury blinded him. It was one thing to threaten them, one thing to chase them—they’d stolen a rare artifact from the museum that was, in actuality, a Terrilian weapon Jack instantly recognized and the Doctor concurred. The Pholythes thought it an ancient ceremonial urn. Problem was, the weapon was still active.

So, yes, the Doctor understood why they chased them from the ceremonial gardens where Jack dressed as a native in order to take the urn-weapon. He understood the Pholythes _didn’t_ understand why they’d done so.

It was quite another matter, and one the Doctor did _not_ tolerate, to shoot at Rose. The Doctor could handle it himself, nothing new there. But not Rose. Never Rose.

“Stop!” He roared, standing and pulling Rose with him. Lower, wrath vibrating under the surface, he crouched slightly to look her in the eye. It didn’t matter her eyesight wasn’t as keen as his, the Doctor knew she understood.

“Are you all right?” He ran his dirty hands over her checking for injuries, bruises, a scraped knee.

“Yeah.” In the darkness of the sewer tunnel she tiled her head. “I’m fine, Doctor. Just, you know, filthy.”

He almost smiled at her obvious joke, but _someone shot at Rose_. The Doctor kissed her forehead, ignore the muck on her skin and on his own, and turned around to face their pursuers, keeping Rose safely behind his own body.

“You shot at us.” His voice echoed around the tunnel, ricocheting as sharply as the shot. “Why?”

The guards, a pair of blank-faced men in their early manhood, froze. To their credit, they didn’t look at each other but kept their gaze on the Doctor. They did, however, lower their weapons.

“You stole our sacred urn and dare ask us why?” Guard #1 demanded.

“I appropriated a dangerous weapon from another planet,” the Doctor snarled. “It was still active and could go off at any minute.”

“The urn speaks to us,” the other admitted, voice trembling the slightest. “When the beam of light activates, those nearby are blessed.”

“It’s killed before?” The Doctor shouted. “And you kept it?” 

Rose stepped beside him, hand resting on his arm. “Doctor.”

“The Word is not always verbal, many times we must listen with our other senses.” Guard #1, voice righteous, said.

“Great.” He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Lads, if I may?” Jack stepped beside them. “How many has this urn killed?”

“Untold thousands have been blessed since the Times of Urich,” Guard #2 said. “My grandfather was one and our family was elevated to the Temple where I now serve.”

The Doctor opened his mouth but paused. “The Temple? So if the laser—the beam of light—touches someone, their family becomes, what? Part of the Temple?”

“How?” Rose demanded. “You’re a guard. What was your grandfather before—well before his death?”

“Master of the Flotilla.” Guard #2 whispered. “Being part of the Temple, guarding the urn, is far more prestigious.”

“We are called to serve,” Guard #1 added, but his voice lost some of its luster. “My great-great-grandmother was a well-admired weaver. Her creations are still displayed in the Museum. Even the mighty emperor is not immune from such a calling.”

“So the urn shoots a person and that person’s immediate family moves into the Temple, yeah?” Rose tilted her head. The Doctor loved that look on her, that deducting, figuring it out look. Fantastic she was. “What happens to their positions? Their possessions?”

Both guards shifted, their feet shucking at the thick muck.

“And the Temple, those leaders gain, what, exactly?” Rose paused but her hand dug into his arm. The Doctor didn’t stop her, nor did he interrupt. He knew where she was going, had come to the same conclusion himself.

“The Temple—it is the Temple.” Guard #1 floundered. “Our most sacred and revered—”

“Yeah. Yeah, I get it. But who’s in charge? What do they get? Tribute? Extra food rations? Gold and silver and the Koh-i-Noor?”

“What’s the Koh-i-Noor?” Jack whispered.

“Giant diamond from Earth,” the Doctor muttered back.

“They…the Temple is our repository for all things.” Guard #2, who sounded as if he all-too-easily followed Rose’s logic, sighed. “They are paid before families eat, before taxes to the emperor, before—”

“Jareth!” Guard #1 snapped.

“You know it’s true,” Jareth said to his friend. Turning back to them, he nodded in the bare light from their bayonets. “Many believe serving the Temple grants them food and clothing, medicine during the outbreaks. This is true, but at the price of the land. The people are starving, they can’t pay two tributes. The stock is dying, the rains haven’t come, the crops have all failed.”

“If they hear you, we’ll all hang,” Guard #1 groused. “You know they have spies, even down here.”

“We’re dying anyway,” Jareth snapped. “You know we are.”

With a large, very put-upon sigh, Guard #1 capitulated. “Aye.”

“So then why chase us?” Rose asked. “Why go to all this trouble, in a truly terrible sewer—seriously, this is one of the worst I’ve seen and I resent that I’ve seen so many—”

“Oi!” The Doctor grumbled.

“To chase us for an artifact you don’t seem to want in the first place?”

“Because if they don’t come back with it, they’re dead,” the Doctor said flatly. “They’ll kill you for letting their prize run off. You’d have failed the gods, the emperor, excreta, excreta, ditto, ditto.”

He sighed and ran a hand down his face. As much as he wanted to help, as much as he knew Rose wouldn’t let him get away with not helping, he hated the danger he put her in. How could he keep her safe and yet keep her with him?

On the other hand, it was her fault he cared again. Perfectly happy leaving the universe to itself, wasn’t he. But oh, no, Rose Tyler fell into his life and he remembered what it was to care. Love. 

The Doctor cleared his throat.

“Oh, I’ve missed this!” Jack crowed.

“Saving the world?” Rose asked and dropped her hand from the Doctor’s arm. He missed her touch.

“Breaking and entering.”

“What?”

“Yeah, Jack’s right. We’re going to have to put this back where we found it, no longer functioning of course—or a replica if I can’t disarm it safely—but Jareth, you there—”

“Purtnich” Guard #1 supplied.

“Jareth and Purtnich, you’ll need to do something. Rally the people, take a stand. Are you prepared for that?”

“Yes,” Jareth immediately answered.

“If I die, I’m coming back to haunt you all,” Purtnich grumbled.

“Everything dies,” Rose said softly. Her words somehow echoed in the sewer tunnel, a strange song that made the Doctor look at her oddly. “Everything has its time, and everything dies. It’s not that you do so, it’s how you live that matters. You don’t just give up. You don’t just let things happen. You make a stand.”

Pride choked him, and the Doctor grinned down at Rose. This beautiful, brave, daring woman who had most definitely captured his hearts. He took her hand, and she looked up, grinning that tongue-teasing smile that drove him mad.

“Ready?” He asked the group at large but winked at her.

“Ready.”

If only...


End file.
